


Untitled

by leobrat



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leobrat/pseuds/leobrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She hadn't seen him in three years, since the funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theredspool](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredspool/gifts).



“A Mr. Daniel Humphrey is here to see you, madame.”

 

Her assistant’s words fall out, casual and ever so-slightly nervous (never knowing how a visitor will be received), and Blair doesn’t look up from the sketches of next seasons’ designs laid out in front of her. She doesn’t move or make a sound, and after a few seconds Genevieve clears her throat, very quietly. Genevieve. When the bright-eyed blonde applied for the position and introduced herself as _Jenny Jones_ , that simply wouldn’t do at all and Blair informed her that professionally, from here on out, she would go by Genevieve. There hasn’t been any problem with compliance.

 

“Madame, a Mr…”

 

“I heard you,” Blair finally says, still without looking up. She hasn’t seen him in over three years, not since the funeral. A year after that, Serena came to live with her and Henry while the divorce was going through, but she’s been gone for some time now too, London or LA or maybe it was Tokyo by this point. Blair can’t always find the time to keep up. She has an eight-year-old son to raise, and two multi-billion dollar companies to run, and while it’s sometimes tempting to accept Serena’s random offers of a week on this yacht in Greece, or a month at that casino in Abu Dhabi, their lives are just too different for them to mesh the way they once did.

 

Genevieve is still standing two feet in front of the door (she never dares come closer without an explicit invitation), and Blair can see that she’s nervously awaiting instruction. Blair looks back to her desk, at all of the sketches and finally the photos of Henry, in a folding double frame. One picture is from this year’s school photo day, and the other is him as an infant, held in Chuck’s arms. Blair’s heart tightens as she looks at it and after another quite long pause she softly tells Genevieve to send in Mr. Humphrey.

 

Usually, when a visitor comes to her office, it’s someone very familiar. Henry, brought in by her mother and Cyrus after school. Nate makes a point to take her to lunch every couple of months. He is a stabilizing male presence in Henry’s life, for which Blair is grateful. Business associates are shown to one of the conference rooms or the atelier. She’s not quite sure where the ex-husband of her best friend (and her own ex-lover) falls.

 

It seems an interminable amount of time before the office door opens again, and this time it’s not her mousy assistant, but Blair sucks in a tiny breath and there he is...and it’s not like it’s the same way it always was, but the world seems different now. 

 

Not better, not worse, but different. 

 

Sepia instead of grey, sarcastic instead of cold. 

 

Unrehearsed. Unpolished. 

 

Softer.

 

He’s in a rumpled suit with a day’s growth of beard, as though he’d been traveling (commercial, most likely). Hair is unkempt, scraggly and curling on the ends, and Blair notices a few threads of gray running through them. She gets her own hair glazed every three weeks on the dot, and if her stylist has ever covered any grays, he’s wisely kept it to himself, but the sight of Dan just now makes her feel her age. His skin is a deep tan, and she knows that he kept the house in Positano when he and Serena split. Serena was hardly ever there anyway, since it was mainly his writing sanctuary.

 

He’s still standing with his hand on the doorknob as if he isn’t sure whether or not it’s really okay for him to come inside, though he hasn’t taken his eyes from her. Since she invited him in (or at least accepted his call), she should gesture for him to have a seat, have Genevieve bring him some refreshment, offer something, anything that she normally would to any stranger off the street, but they are both stuck in time, staring each other down, not wanting to be the first person to make a move.

 

Sometimes on her lunches with Nate, she’ll catch a gleam in his eye that brings her back to being fifteen and the empress of the sophomore class. It’s a nice feeling to remember that girl, even if she feels like a stranger at this point, or a character from a novel she read a long time ago.

 

This isn’t that same kind of nostalgia. The Dan Humphrey stories didn’t get shared fondly in her little family, not when he was married to Serena, and afterwards, if he were mentioned at all, it was with mocking.

 

The silence really is going on for far too long, she realizes that, but it’s all hitting her at once. There was good here. There was real, honest-to-goodness _love_ here. It was simple and it was complicated and it felt so unbelievably _right_...while still feeling like there was something missing. For a long time, she thought that something was Chuck- that there was no room for anyone else in her heart as long as he was there.

 

And then he died.

 

And of course, there was something missing after that. Her boy’s father was ripped away, her life’s partner, but beyond that, there was… _that_. That thing that had been missing all of her life, even in the happiest of times. Her grief was almost inconsequential next to Henry’s. There was no time for devastation, or despair, she would not put her son through that. Henry would honor his father’s memory, and live his life fully. Blair came second.

 

And for whatever reason, that hole that has been part of Blair for so long, begins to fill, right in this moment. 

 

Dan clears his throat. “Is this...a bad time? Should I come back, or…”

“No,” Blair finally speaks, though it is very soft, nearly inaudible (even to her), but it stops him short. “No,” she says, more clearly, and stands from behind her desk. “No. Stay.”


End file.
